The Past and Present of Online Video
Streaming of media to home users has been around for over 15 years. RealNetworks was arguably the first company to broadly infiltrate the consumer market with streaming audio and video back in 1994. Since then, a number of different flavors of video are now utilized to deliver video to consumers and because households are often equipped with high speed internet connections, the experience of watching content on your computer begins to rival that of traditional television.
For most of the history of streaming video, content creators have had to incorporate a plan to distribute their content to home computers. For many years, the options to do so were simplified by the nature of the consumer’s device to view online video; desktops and laptops. At the beginning, you would install the Real plugin to be able to view most streaming media. Adobe claimed a 98% market penetration, an easy initial install of their plugin, and everyone who visited Flash based “rich media” sites was thus enabled to consume video wrapped in Flash. Other formats popped up offering differing quality and functionality. While providing an online video experience called for particular levels of effort by the content creators, the limited options for home viewers to ingest the video experience kept streaming media logistics in check.
Today’s smart phones, set top boxes and internet connected televisions have created a major wrinkle to streaming media logistics. What was once a simple conversion from baseband video (traditional television) to something deliverable and playable on a desktop or laptop has mutated to an evolving landscape of devices of which the public is beginning to expect the same media experience on. Instead of a content creator repurposing their video to one alternate (internet ready) format, they are now considering ten copies of the same video and beyond. While the personal computer market has been dominated by two operating systems and is serviceable by a single IP based delivery, mobile handsets have varying operating systems, screen resolutions, aspect ratios and codec support.
Content creators who are able to monetize their content have an easier time stomaching the costs to make their content ubiquitous to the end user device. If you charge for access to your content through a Pay-Per-View model, it is easier to justify these costs. Content creators who are offering their content for free, (even with ad support) may have difficulty accepting today’s costs associated with a large transcoding effort. Unfortunately, consumers don’t care much about these costs, yet still have high expectations of quality.
The landscape is not getting any less cloudy despite efforts to promote simplicity. HTML5 is the current buzz in the industry, but most media creators have popularized it and limited their use of it to Apple’s iPad. The use of HTML5 in and on other devices requires multiple flavors of the same video if you want all devices that support HTML5 to be able to play it back. If you factor in different screen sizes of devices, and different connection speeds (2G, 3G, 4G, Wifi), the number of “copies” of the same video can grow to an eye-popping number.The development of Scalable Video Coding is something to keep a close eye out for. Device support for this flavor of h.264 video could help to bring the number of necessary copies of an individual piece of media down to something more economically palatable.
The consumer cares little about the level of effort involved with providing a “watch video anywhere” experience. How will you be able to meet their high expectations and monetize your content while keeping your costs down?
Author: Mike Dube, Solutions Engineer
For most of the history of streaming video, content creators have had to incorporate a plan to distribute their content to home computers. For many years, the options to do so were simplified by the nature of the consumer’s device to view online video; desktops and laptops. At the beginning, you would install the Real plugin to be able to view most streaming media. Adobe claimed a 98% market penetration, an easy initial install of their plugin, and everyone who visited Flash based “rich media” sites was thus enabled to consume video wrapped in Flash. Other formats popped up offering differing quality and functionality. While providing an online video experience called for particular levels of effort by the content creators, the limited options for home viewers to ingest the video experience kept streaming media logistics in check.
Today’s smart phones, set top boxes and internet connected televisions have created a major wrinkle to streaming media logistics. What was once a simple conversion from baseband video (traditional television) to something deliverable and playable on a desktop or laptop has mutated to an evolving landscape of devices of which the public is beginning to expect the same media experience on. Instead of a content creator repurposing their video to one alternate (internet ready) format, they are now considering ten copies of the same video and beyond. While the personal computer market has been dominated by two operating systems and is serviceable by a single IP based delivery, mobile handsets have varying operating systems, screen resolutions, aspect ratios and codec support.
Content creators who are able to monetize their content have an easier time stomaching the costs to make their content ubiquitous to the end user device. If you charge for access to your content through a Pay-Per-View model, it is easier to justify these costs. Content creators who are offering their content for free, (even with ad support) may have difficulty accepting today’s costs associated with a large transcoding effort. Unfortunately, consumers don’t care much about these costs, yet still have high expectations of quality.
The landscape is not getting any less cloudy despite efforts to promote simplicity. HTML5 is the current buzz in the industry, but most media creators have popularized it and limited their use of it to Apple’s iPad. The use of HTML5 in and on other devices requires multiple flavors of the same video if you want all devices that support HTML5 to be able to play it back. If you factor in different screen sizes of devices, and different connection speeds (2G, 3G, 4G, Wifi), the number of “copies” of the same video can grow to an eye-popping number.The development of Scalable Video Coding is something to keep a close eye out for. Device support for this flavor of h.264 video could help to bring the number of necessary copies of an individual piece of media down to something more economically palatable.
The consumer cares little about the level of effort involved with providing a “watch video anywhere” experience. How will you be able to meet their high expectations and monetize your content while keeping your costs down?
Author: Mike Dube, Solutions Engineer
posted by Origin Digital at
8:14 AM
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